Coach hears of game's significance everywhere, even in his own home

Here, then, is coach Ron Prince's take on rivalry games like the one Kansas State is preparing to play at 11:30 a.m. Saturday.

"They define coaches' legacies," Prince said. "People will ultimately remember you based on the number of championships, and that's usually directly tied to how many times you can beat your rival."

It sounds dramatic, but there's some truth behind the rhetoric. If K-State loses Saturday in the 106th installment of the Sunflower Showdown, Prince runs the risk of becoming known as the coach who couldn't beat Kansas.

Prince is 0-2 against the Jayhawks, losing 39-20 in 2006 and 30-24 last season. It's no coincidence that, less than three full seasons into his tenure at K-State, many Wildcat fans are clamoring for Prince to be fired.

Prince says he doesn't pay much attention to the outside voices, and in this case, he doesn't need to. The Wildcat coach gets frequent reminders of the magnitude of this rivalry from his inner circle.

"I've heard about this game every single day, and it starts inside my own home with my four kids," Prince said. "Everybody wants to win this game, including me."

No one needs it more than Prince. Beating a KU team that began the season ranked 14th in the nation would bolster the case for retaining Prince and ease some of the pressure applied by a restless fanbase.

A loss, meanwhile, could be the final straw for fans already dissatisfied with the direction of the program.

Prince understands the stakes as well as anyone. As a Junction City native, he grew up in the shadow of the Sunflower Showdown.

"The passions run high on this thing, and that's very good," he said.

Those passions are only intensified by Bill Snyder's perennial success against KU. Beating the Jayhawks was practically a birthright for Wildcat fans in the 1990s, as Snyder's teams won 11 straight games in the series by an average margin of 42-9.

"It really wasn't a rivalry before, because we had such a big winning streak on them by such large margins," center Zach Kendall said. "Coach (Mark) Mangino has done a great job with that program. We'd like to show that we're the better program in Kansas. I think we have the better program, and we'll see about that this weekend."

Clearly, Prince has been eyeing this one for a while. When the Wildcats arrived for summer workouts, they found a digital clock in the locker room counting down the days until the KU game.

"At the beginning of the season and in the offseason, KU is always on all of our minds," Kendall said. "It's a big game for us. It's finally here, and we're ready to go win it."

Prince didn't directly address how Saturday's game could affect his future at K-State. Then again, he didn't really need to. As Prince said himself, games like this require little explanation.